"The Machine Stops"
12. PART A: Consider the silence at the end of the story. How is this detail important to the development of the passage’s central ideas?


A Silence means the Machine has officially stopped, supporting the idea that technology has its limits.


B Silence literally and figuratively means death when the Machine stops: both the end of individual lives and the collapse of human civilization.


C Silence represents the unknown, like the darkness, which also comes when the Machine stops.


D Silence means the Machine has officially stopped, and with it the destruction of faith and establishment of an indifferent universe.